If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Announcement

Collapse

No announcement yet.

Fast food: Is there ANY actual evidence/science that it's unhealthy ??

For what it's worth, Tom Naughton filmed Fathead as a counterargument to Morgan Spurlock's Supersize Me and lost 12 pounds in a month eating McDonald's food. You can tell that Naughton had consulted with Michael and Mary Dan Eades before starting; his food list shows that he removed most of his buns and muffins. That means he knew full well it was about low carb and not about low calories. He didn't drop dead. But that was one person, and only for a month. While the movie makes fast food look just fine and dandy, I don't think Naughton continued the experiment. He has since gone Paleo.

I think we can reach a consensus that fast food contains a list of alledged baddies: High fructose corn syrup, corn additives and preservatives and starches, dwarf hybrid wheat, seed oils, trans fats, artificial colors and flavors, CAFO meats, and other cheap fillers, much of it GMO.

The OP is trolling for the same thing that the junk food lobby has been trolling for: "show me a study which PROVES that all these baddies are bad. You know, conclusive proof." Of course, studies like this don't exist. Studies are so expensive that only the profitable "bad" food companies can afford them, the bad effects don't show up right away, and some people are more resistant than others. The OP and similar trolls won't be satisfied unless fast food causes death in 100% of subjects instantly... and they probably won't be satisfied even then.

Now I'm waiting for the OP to come in and divide up my post into separate quotes to refute each point. I've been on blogs for upwards of 15 years and it's always the same. Typical troll behavior.

5'0" female, 45 years old. Started Primal October 31, 2011, at a skinny fat 111.5 lbs. Low weight: 99.5 lb on a fast. Gained back to 115(!) on SAD chocolate, potato chips, and stress. Currently 111.

Comment

Thanks for posting actual responses to the dogmatic conjecture many people here posted. Some of you guys are as bad as vegans with red meat, when it comes to fast food.

LMAO...he posts ONE coherent response in this whole thread and gets a pat on the head, and everyone else is just picking on him. I swear, this is whats wrong with kids today . The bar is just set way to low.

OP apparently dismisses all epidemiological/anthropological evidence though he may use it when it fits his purpose. He resorts to name calling when presented with anything he cant comprehend. He wants to know why specific ingredients are bad, but even if you told him he would call you a voodoo witch doctor for using big words and move on to the next ludicrous post. Whats the point?

As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.

Comment

Looks like fast food is much healthier in Europe and Latin America, no pink slime and ammonium hydroxide in our Big Mac!
.

This was a very good link. Now we are getting somewhere. It sounds very bad, but then it appears they have stopped using the ammonia based filler meat..maybe fast food is less bad ever since the negative muckraking?

Comment

Have you seen the people who work/eat there.... Proof enough for me that its something I don't want to be part of!

And the people who work there tell all their friends not to eat there, because they know what goes into it. I remember this from junior high 30 years ago. And that was pre-GMO, pre pink slime, even pre-nasty wheat.

5'0" female, 45 years old. Started Primal October 31, 2011, at a skinny fat 111.5 lbs. Low weight: 99.5 lb on a fast. Gained back to 115(!) on SAD chocolate, potato chips, and stress. Currently 111.

Comment

McDonalds used to have some really tasty Strawberry Milkshakes thirty years ago! Or maybe my sense of taste has deteriorated or improved over the years because it does not taste half that good anymore…

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."

- Schopenhauer

Comment

I used to work for McDonalds years ago, also worked for burger king too and I still work part time at a pizza shop. Can I explain to you scientifically why eating that stuff is bad for you? Probably not but as someone who ate tons of that crap I can tell you I never felt crappier and was definitely at my heaviest when I ate that stuff on a daily basis.

Do I still eat some of it? Yes but not nearly as much and when I go on long stretches of eating primally I definitely feel at my best. Obviously everyone is different but while I may not be smart enough to scientifically explain the reasoning behind it, it was pretty apparent the food i was eating was bad for me.

And how does one portion control fast food ? If your constantly eating it the recommended amount wont likely fill you up. On the flip side if you dont eat it much portion control becomes easier fast food doesnt taste as good as before. Eating it now usually makes me sick afterwards. Probably my bodies way of scientifically saying dont eat this garbage

I realize this doesnt answer the op's question to the specifics as to why fastfood is considered bad but still throwing my opinion in

Comment

I used to eat fast food all the time. In fact I probably gained 100 lbs almost exclusively from fast food. I would never have told you that it made me feel sick but I wasn't really listening to my body at the time. I was young, too, which helps. If you can plow through a bottle of vodka on an empty stomach in a couple of hours and not feel hungover the next morning then french fries and coke probably isn't going to make you feel ill, either. Now that I'm older and have been eating more whole foods I can tell you that it does make me feel funky after eating it. Is this scientific? No. The whole thing about science is that it's really good at telling us how human beings are affected by a chemical on a massive scale. Science can tell you the arsenic in a large enough dose will probably kill you- but maybe it won't, because there are certainly people out there who have survived arsenic poisoning, or who even take poisons regularly and aren't croaking.

So what are we to do? Well we're all adults here so you can decide for yourself. For me I have studied science in depth. I know the limitations of it, especially nutrition science. There's some wisdom in following time-honored cultural food traditions because they evolved over time to benefit people. There's wisdom too, I think, in understanding that we evolved as a species eating whole foods that are processed minimally compared to much of the fare you find in the supermarket today. Ultimately, though, I go with how my body feels. Science will certainly influence me to try new ways of eating, but I go by how well I feel during and after each meal because science can't say what will benefit me as an individual.